


The Syntax of Things - A Fan Contribution

by Lalex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fun and Fluff, Happy Ending, Living Together, M/M, Sort Of, Story continued, alternative ending, renovating a country estate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26147746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalex/pseuds/Lalex
Summary: When no-one knows whether Snape will ever wake up, Harry has to make the hardest choice.
Relationships: Dean Thomas/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Severus Snape, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood
Comments: 10
Kudos: 67





	The Syntax of Things - A Fan Contribution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arrisha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrisha/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Syntax of Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097794) by [Arrisha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arrisha/pseuds/Arrisha). 



> I absolutely loved Arrisha's "The Syntax of Things". I read it when the last chapter was still missing and was so moved by their story, I decided to write my own last chapter. This is absolutely of my own making and was not discussed with the author, so their ending is probably very different. The story can stand alone, I think, even though there are a few references to their work.
> 
> Dear Arrisha, I hope this makes you smile and inspires you to share your own ending with us :)
> 
> I have no beta, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Please enjoy.

“You have to go home at some point, Harry.”

Home. Where was home, anyway?

“I… ah, oh. I'm sorry, Harry.”

Had he said that aloud?

“I just meant, to get some proper rest and be surrounded… by… family….” The last of this line was delivered haltingly and with a hint of embarrassment. “People that love and care for you.” With this statement Hermione regained her usual confidence. Harry just looked at her. “You know we are your family, right? Come to the Burrow with me.”

He knew she meant well, but he could not go and watch Mrs. Weasley bustle around the house, smiling with red rimmed eyes, trying to bury her grief in pots and pans. And anyway, his home was right here, lying on this bed, covered by a white sheet.

“I will be here when he wakes,” Harry said. He had said it at the beginning, when Hermione had at last stopped trying to convince him to go and take a shower and had grimly but firmly peeled his torn and dirtied clothes off of him. He had said it three days later, when she had quietly told him that Ron would not come and see him, as long as he continued placing “a long dead traitor-bastard” above his own family. And he said it now, three weeks later, when she was the only person comfortable enough with his brooding silences and Severus’ prone form as company, to visit him for longer than ten minutes at a time.

He had gone to the funerals. The important ones, anyway. If he went to every single one, there wouldn’t have been any time left at Severus’ side. Fred, Remus and Tonks. Three burials and three hours away from him. It was enough. It had to be enough.

“You don’t know if he will wake,” Hermione did not say. He heard it anyways. A part of him knew the chances were not great, but he managed not to listen to that part most of the time.

“He was not there, Hermione. He would have been there with… with the others if he were dead.” This had occurred to him minutes after Voldemort’s body had fallen to the ground. Why had Severus not been there with his mother and father? Sirius, Remus and Tonks? They had murdered too, during the battle, so it could not be a question of …heaven and hell, for lack of a better concept. Also, now he knew Severus loved him – and wouldn’t Severus skin him alive even thinking this to himself – there could not be any other explanation for him not to have been there. “And his heart couldn’t have been still for long, you said it yourself. Sir Haresby treated him a soon as we got here. It should be fine. It will be fine. It will all be fine.” 

Hermione did not respond. She merely placed a hand over his and squeezed. 

_____________________

Severus skull was throbbing painfully, and his mouth felt like his tongue had swollen to thrice it’s size. He must be on a ship, or flying. Everything was moving. Where was he being taken? He had to find Potter. Why were they taking him away? He tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t move at all. He tried to open his eyes but that, too, wouldn’t work. His hands were stuck to his sides. He was so tired.

He tried to calm himself. He was not prone to panic and had faced almost certain death on numerous occasions. 

Death.

A memory slowly surfaced, lifting through the fog of his hazy mind. 

Fangs, blood, Voldemort. He was dead. He must be dead. The heat of his life had bled through his sweat soaked clothes. 

Something else teased him on the edge of his senses, but when he tried to focus on it, it eluded his grasp. The heaviness of his body felt like a cage. It slowly pulled at him until his mind was as heavy as the rest of him. 

Darkness crept in around him.

____________________

After one month was complete, Harry made the hardest decision he had ever had to make. Walking into the forest had been easy, it hadn’t even been a real choice. All his life he had been led, or pushed, rather, towards that one moment.

Maybe this decision only seemed to be so hard because he was not used to going his own way. At least that's what Hermione said. Harry wasn’t so sure.

He thanked Sir Haresby for his continued and full attention to Severus, thanked Madam Pomfrey for her friendship, her intensive care and her warm welcome into her house, and left.

___________________

“Harry! The food’s arrived!” Ron bellowed. His voice echoed through the too empty front hall, up the stairs and along the corridor. Harry wiped the paintbrush on the ridge of his bucket and spread the rest of the white colour paint on the mantlepiece. _White. The colour._

He shook his head and set the brush down. “Coming!” Harry shouted, as he wiped his hands on a flannel he had tucked into his jeans. He took a look around he room. The wallpapers were of a soft blue pattern, not too boring but unobtrusive enough. Furniture would soon follow. 

When he entered the kitchen, Hermione was just passing around plates as Ron was carefully lifting each cardboard package out of a huge plastic bag with a look of awe on his face. “Muggles are amazing. Look, `Mione, the boxes are still warm! How can they be warm without a warming charm?” 

“They are called food containers and they are especially made to keep hot food warm until it’s delivered.” Ginny beamed proudly.

“Oh fuck off. One semester at a muggle Uni and suddenly you are an expert, huh?” Ron grumbled good-naturedly. 

“I think it’s because the Scrumbliggers can’t see through the cardboard and therefor huddle around them. They are extremely curious creatures and when there are more than nine in a huddle, they can give off a lot of heat. Daddy and I once used a similar trick to protect our early Cocodugies from a late March frost.” Luna explained mildly while shovelling Chicken Tikka Massala onto her plate.

Harry sat down next to her. 

Dean snorted. “I still don’t understand how pureblood wizards can be so ignorant, sometimes.” Ginny poked his side. He smiled at her fondly at put an arm around her shoulders. “Except for you, of course. You are the best at everything.” Ginny nodded, placated.

Neville just shrugged and dug into his curry. 

“How is the bedroom coming along, Harry?” Hermione leaned into his side. 

“I finished the mantle, but the hearth should still be kitted in some areas. The window frames are next. I thought, maybe a nice sturdy brown?” 

“Brown? That’s a bit… sinister, don’t you think? You would have to make the whole second storey frames brown. Why don’t you keep them white?”

“I think Severus would prefer a darker colour.”

A soft hush fell over the table. Ron cleared his throat and Hermione shot him a dark look. “Ah… Yeah, I agree with Harry, actually. Snape will probably paint them all black anyway, when he… gets here.”

Harry tried not to wince. He was touched Ron was making an effort, of course. He just wasn’t very good at it. 

“I think brown is a logical choice,” Luna contributed. “It will keep the Kutschenlark larvae away. They like to make nests in the eaves above white window frames, and everyone knows that could seriously affect your sleeping pattern.”

“But most window frames are white, Luna. Wouldn’t we all have these nests, then?” Hermione retorted.

“Well, maybe that’s why you get up so early. You should try a nice rosé colour. Maybe that way you can sleep a bit longer.”

"Yes, we could sleep longer, Hermione," Ron said around his mouth full of naan.

“I get up that early because I have a job at the ministry, not because my window frames are white.” Hermione shook her hair out of her face primly.

“If you say so,” Luna said distractedly. She put her differently colour socked feet up on Neville’s lap, worming them between his thighs, which made Neville choke on his curry. He went beet red, whether from the choking or Luna’s nonchalant advances, Harry wasn’t so sure.

The food was fantastic. Everybody seemed to think so, judging from the general lack of conversation on top of enthusiastic munching noises. When they had finished, Ron having polished off Harry’s half eaten Chicken Vindaloo, they made short work of the washing up. After a quick discussion about who had which things left to do, they returned to their respective tasks. 

Hermione was checking the spells needed for a comfortable wizarding home, as the largish country estate had been uninhabited for nearly twenty-three years. Many of the standard protection spells, gardening charms and household charms had weakened or worn off completely. She recast them where necessary and noted the ones she couldn’t do on her own.

Neville was tending the gardens, a mission he had taken on for himself. He had been slavering away for the last two months, at least. Trees, hedges and roses needed to be trimmed, pixies caught, weeds ripped out, gnomes resettled, plants tamed (literally, in the case of one flesh eating purple tentacula) and walkways freed from mosses and grasses. Once he had “done the basics”, as he called it, he would go on to plant, resettle and generally tend to all the plants he wanted to grow in the gardens. His pride and joy was the herb garden next to the kitchens in the south wing.

Ginny and Dean were still sorting through the accumulated clutter in the attic rooms, as well as the cellars. They had all done their separate living spaces before; Neville and Luna, Ginny and Dean, Ron and Hermione, and Harry. Those two, however, had volunteered to do the reminder of the rooms. “Who knows what sort of crazy things might turn up. Maybe the great-great-grandmother of the witch, who lived here last, had a collection of medieval erotica! Or the mad uncle who died in the Green Room hid his illicit lover away in the cellars and we will find his skeleton!” Ginny giggled. Dean waggled his eyebrows at her and Ron lifted his hand to cover his eyes and theatrically begged: “Pleaaaase don’t talk about anything that has to do with you and Dean in the dark where I can hear you.” 

“Penis,” Ginny said. “Willy, wang, wiener.”

“Nooooooo!” Ron shouted and ran screaming through the kitchen door.

He was overseeing the renovating and decorating of the guest quarters, the large common room, the small ball room as well as any other rooms that would be used communally. The structurally important parts of the house, like the roof and stairs, had already been seen to. Molly, Arthur, Bill and Fleur, George, Charlie and his respective lovers (whom no-one could ever be bothered to learn their names anymore, after he had come back from Romania for a few years and started to switch them more often that his shirts; they had henceforth universally agreed that any lover he brought along would be called “Eric”) and on occasion even Percy, Sheamus or Lavender would come over and help him where they could. Ron was brilliant at coordinating them all and they swept through the house like a small army, cleaning, patching, mending and painting. As it turned out, he actually did have quite a good eye for colour schemes and designs and shapes that fit together, which no-one would’ve ever expected. It might have to do with his aptitude for strategies and patterns in general, Harry thought. 

That left Harry to decorate his’ and Severus’ rooms. It took him quite a while longer than the others, as he had decided to do it all by hand instead of using magic. It felt good to do something productive with his hands, something that would leave a lasting and positive mark on the world. He didn’t really count his contributions to the war, because all he had done then was kill and destroy things, however positive the outcome had been for the general populace. Also, his therapist had recommended for him to find a hobby that involved a creative process where he didn’t have to think too hard about things. Ron still snickered at him, ever since he had mentioned that particular pearl of wisdom. “Something where you don’t have to think! Even your therapist thinks you’re stupid, Harry.”

“It makes perfect sense, when you think about it,” Hermione had promptly asserted. “It gives his mind the opportunity to run along unhindered and his unconscious will have time to sort through, well, everything that has happened during the more taxing years of our schooling; as well as whatever Harry talked about with her during his last session. I am convinced it will greatly improve his general broodiness and…”

“But don’t you see, Hermione,” Ron had guffawed, “He’s not allowed to think! Those muggle therapists are genius!” He’d laughed so hard, he’d fallen of his chair, glass of whisky, biscuits, and all.

On top of doing everything by hand, Harry was working on his own. It was not that he minded being alone on principle. It was more the knowledge that the others were all working together, with their partner, and could fight about wallpaper patterns or floor boards or which one of the rooms would be the bedroom. 

He thought of Severus, as he had been during that whole summer cooped up in that safe house together. If living with him now would be anything like back then, he would consistently mock Harry’s poor taste in design and would insist on generally disagreeing with whatever Harry would suggest. However, he woul also expect to be talked around, whenever he secretly thought it might not have been a half bad idea. Harry would have to observe him carefully, in order to recognize those occasions and steer the conversation accordingly. They would bicker over every last picture frame and maybe make it up in the evening, when Severus would creep into his bed (he would insist on his own separate sleeping chamber, of course) and wait for Harry to make the first move. Sometimes, the tension might ride so high, Severus would snap and have his wicked way with him, biting and scratching, like he had done that one time they had been together. 

At first, he had pushed these kinds of thoughts away, burying all his dreams, fears, hopes and passions in a very deep hole inside himself, and jumping up and down on the lid for good measure, in order to also get away from the pain. During his sessions with Wilma, however, he had learned to be kind to himself, to his soul, and that included accepting his dreams and fears and the emotions they caused in him. She had advised him to take anything that gave him piece, made him happy or otherwise had a positive influence on his mindset, and let himself dwell on these things. It seemed, she had said, that he was rather more inclined to the dark side of his thoughts anyway, and therefor he had to encourage himself intentionally towards the lighter path. She was prone to work with his strengths and dreams and build up on what was already there, instead of “endlessly and repeatedly dragging up his nightmares and lingering on his weaknesses”. They had worked through his fears and trauma, but they had done it the once and then closed that particular door firmly.

So, Harry dwelled. Oh, how he dwelled. Severus’ bark of a laugh, like something startled out of him. Severus’ eyes, focused and intense, trying to pierce his mind’s protections again and again. Severus’ hand, breaking his most intimate barrier, pulling his hair, biting his neck, spilling himself inside him. He found these thoughts did not distract him from his work, and he didn’t loose himself in them.

The rooms they would share – they would share, they would! – were situated in the south wing, above the kitchens, and overlooked the herb garden and the orchard beyond. They were on the second storey and included two bedrooms, one bathroom, one smaller toilet, one smallish living room, a large book parlour (it wouldn’t do to call it a library, as that was on the first floor of the east wing, right opposite Ron and Hermione’s quarters) filled with rows of book shelfs and little alcoves and squishy armchairs, and last but not least, a windowless room where Severus could install his work rooms. 

Harry had debated with himself whether he should take rooms in the north wing or in the dungeons, to accommodate Severus, but had decided against it. When he thought about Severus’ life, he wasn’t sure Severus even knew what he really liked and disliked. He had been wearing so many masks (and hadn’t he spoken about this once, when Harry had not understood what he meant at all) and lived the way he thought he was expected to live. It would be hard for him to find out who he was, now that the cause that had determined his life up to the smallest increment was suddenly gone forever. Neither of his two masters would watch what he did and said, and no-one would judge him for being himself. Well, at least no-one whose good opinion he relied upon, Harry hoped. 

He didn’t know how this would work at all, but he would make it work. He was making it work. He had realised he needed to make a life for himself that Severus could join into. He needed to stand on his own two feet and know what he wanted from life, in order to be a partner to Severus and not just a… loved sort of pet. Maybe, if he stood strong enough, he could even support Severus in some things. 

Well. What would be, would be. But he would make the best of it, whatever came his way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. All feedback loved.


End file.
